November 03, 2006

Not to rain on the parade but all the talk of dramatic Democratic gains in the House has a tendency to downplay a serious underlying structural problem. Even under the rosiest scenarios, the Democrats only pick up somewhere around 50 seats. Realistically, it looks like 25-35 pickups. The House was designed to be the national political institution most politically responsive to the people. I would venture to say that given the massive train wreck that the GOP has created in public affairs, the founders would be stunned to see so few seats change hands. If these are the kinds of political conditions it takes to move 50 House seats, then we're in trouble.

GOP losses of whatever size are going to trigger a wave of internal backbiting and fingerpointing. No surprise there. But I suspect there is going to emerge a common theme among Republicans, a declaration that the political environment was so toxic that no incumbent party could expect to emerge unscathed. The more brash will declare that the GOP did quite well given the circumstances. What will be missing is any sense that the Republicans made their own bed and were forced to lay in it. The 2006 "political environment" will be treated like a weather phenomenon, something beyond our control, a freak of nature, instead of what it is: a reaction to the GOP's man-made calamity.

I hope that when the political history of the last half century is written it will show, as it should, that the Republicans engaged in a brand of divisive electoral politics that pitted Americans against each other: white against black, men against women, rich against poor, native born against immigrant, straight against gay. Republicans deserve to be tarred by history for exploiting our weaknesses, our prejudices, and our lesser selves for their own political gain. But those are still our weaknesses and our prejudices. We own them. And it is our lesser selves that have succumbed to the Republican political pitch and been willing to be exploited. Removing the Republicans from power will only be a temporary fix unless we fundamentally fix ourselves so that no one, no party, no movement can exploit those same weaknesses again.